FALLBROOK MUSICIAN DIES AFTER BEING FOUND BEATEN
FALLBROOK MUSICIAN DIES AFTER BEING FOUND BEATEN

Robbery in music store apparent motive; no arrests made

A Fallbrook singer and songwriter known for his Americana music died Saturday, several hours after being found beaten and bound inside the Temecula music store where he worked, authorities said.

Edward “Larry” Robinson, 64, was found unconscious, badly beaten and tied up inside Pete’s Music & Guitar Shop on Old Town Front Street about 7:30 p.m. Friday.

He died Saturday morning at a hospital from injuries suffered in the attack, said Riverside County sheriff’s Deputy Myling Bordeau.

No arrests have been made, Bordeau said, and no information was released about the apparent robbery. Homicide detectives were at the store all night.

The victim was found after the shop’s owner called and said he had been unable to reach his employee by phone, Bordeau said.

Robinson had been a fixture in the local music scene for decades and released his most recent album last year.

Friend and former partner Gary Shiebler, who was in a band call The Dorados with Robinson for several years in the late 1990s, was stunned when he heard about the death.

“He was a good friend. I’m in shock,” Shiebler said. “He was an institution in Fallbrook. He was a guitarist and very fine songwriter.”

Sven-Erik Seaholm, who performed with Robinson many times and produced his most recent album, likewise was saddened.

“For his life to end violently is beyond comprehension,” Seaholm said. “He was so gentle, he was one of those guys who led his life like the example you would want to follow.”

Robinson had for years performed at “open mic” functions in Fallbrook, Seaholm said.

“He played a lot of blues and country, rock — pretty diverse. Maybe some would call it a roots-oriented approach. When you say the word Americana, Larry Robinson was definitely Americana in the sense he took all those diverse traditional musics and distilled them with great songwriting and just a really great rendering of it.

“He was a very homespun, grounded, balanced individual. His music was comfort food for the soul.”

According to an article published last year in the San Diego Troubadour, a local music blog, Robinson was a member of Things to Come, a band that played Los Angeles’ Whiskey A Go-Go club in 1967 with The Byrds. He recorded several discs for The Dorados, a band whose songs mainly celebrated fishing, and he was a club mainstay in the North County with a solo CD, “Old California Town,” released in 2005.

Last year he released “Cadillac and Trailer,” a mix of nine original songs and one cover, the article said. Seaholm said Robinson was mostly a solo artist but would get together with local musicians often to record and perform.

He was married and had four children, according to an online biography. His wife, Patricia, was too distraught to speak to a reporter Saturday afternoon, a family friend said.

Pete’s Music & Guitar Shop is one of a chain of independent, family-owned and operated music stores in Southern California, according to its website. The stores buy, sell, repair and trade musical instruments and offer lessons.